S.F. Mulls Retreat From 'Reconstituting' Schools

The San Francisco school district, a pioneer in overhauling troubled
schools by transferring their entire staffs, wants to retreat from the
drastic reform measure.

The city's "reconstitution" program, part of a court-ordered
desegregation plan, is one of the country's most closely watched
experiments in turning around failing urban schools.

Superintendent Waldemar Rojas has agreed to stop reconstituting
schools for two years in exchange for an unusual promise from the local
teachers' union: not to interfere with the forced transfers of teachers
who impede school improvement plans.

The agreement, however, requires the approval of a federal judge,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the
state school board.

Mr. Rojas said reconstitution should cease because ''there are no
lousy schools in San Francisco anymore." He cited improvements in test
scores, dropout rates, and the number of graduates attending state
universities.

He also acknowledged wanting to ease the animosity among teachers
created by reconstitution, but he denied he was buckling to pressure
from the union.

The agreement came after years of fierce opposition by the teachers'
union and on the eve of the district's annual review of which schools
need reconstitution.

It is particularly noteworthy because the 62,000-student district is
one of the oldest and most aggressive practitioners of reconstitution,
having restaffed eight schools since 1994 and eight others during the
1980s. Only a handful of other districts have experimented with the
idea, and a few, including Denver, are launching similar efforts.

"San Francisco is beginning to carve a middle ground between people
who view reconstitution as the answer and people who view it as the
work of the devil," said Julia Koppich, a San Francisco-based education
consultant. "Hopefully, the result will be improved student
learning."

Desegregation Plan Involved

Reconstitution in San Francisco is required by a court-sanctioned
desegregation plan that also sets racial enrollment quotas at each
school. The plan requires the district to improve achievement among
minority students, and since 1994 it has mandated restaffing three
schools a year. ("S.F. Reforms Put on the
Line In Legal Battle," Dec. 11, 1996.)

The district hopes by early next month to receive the needed
endorsements from the NAACP, whose lawsuit led to the 1982
desegregation plan, the federal judge who oversees the case, and the
state school board.

Ms. Koppich, a partner with Management, Analysis & Planning
Associates, said that for the new arrangement to work, schools need
authority to tailor their own budgets and staffs.

"Not having reconstitution hanging over their heads is likely to
improve morale, but I'm more concerned that schools have the tools they
need to improve," she said.

Under San Francisco's current version of reconstitution, the
district removes every employee--from the principal to the janitor--at
schools with weak test scores and acute discipline problems. Those
workers, who are guaranteed other jobs in the district, are replaced by
people who agree to educational tenets detailed in the desegregation
plan.

Under the proposed agreement between the district and the teachers'
union, the two would collaborate on standards for identifying
low-performing schools. Those schools would be required to come up with
improvement plans approved by an overwhelming majority of their
employees. Any teacher who didn't sign on to the plan would have to
transfer.

Transfer Process Unclear

The rub is that teachers who signed on but later ignored or thwarted
the improvement plan would be forced to leave the school.

Last week, district and union officials were still debating who
would determine which teachers must find other jobs in the district and
how those employees would appeal the transfers.

"That's the part that has our people the most nervous," said
Joan-Marie Shelley, the president of the United Educators of San
Francisco. "The union would be waiving its right to grieve, and our
members need confidence in a process that won't leave them open to
capricious transfers."

Ms. Shelley estimated that reconstitution has affected about 10
percent of the union's 5,000 members over the past three years.

"You have walking wounded carrying a lot of depression and
bitterness," she said.

Three years after her school was reconstituted, Hene Kelly is still
fuming. She taught English and health for 20 years at Wilson High
School before it was restaffed in 1994. Now, she enjoys developing the
district's curriculum on the Holocaust but sorely misses teaching.

"I couldn't walk into another school and open myself up again after
getting hurt like that," Ms. Kelly said. "The kids were also hurt that
their school had been branded."

Denver is grappling with similar repercussions after its decision
this month to reconstitute two low-achieving elementary schools. Like
their counterparts in San Francisco, the roughly 50 teachers at the
schools who aren't rehired will be forced to take other jobs in the
district.

But unlike the current method in San Francisco, the president of the
Denver Classroom Teachers Association, Leonard Fox, helped identify
problematic schools. Mark Stevens, a spokesman for the Denver schools,
said that "having a union president on board makes the process a lot
more credible."

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